Catapult Film Fund

Determined to turn unfathomable tragedy into action, the teenage survivors of Parkland, Florida catalyze a powerful, unprecedented youth movement that spreads with lightning speed across the country, as a generation of mobilized youth take back democracy in this powerful coming-of-age story.

A dogged family-run paper in Iowa gives citizens the scoop on forces threatening to overwhelm their precarious small-town existence.

Lift shines a spotlight on the invisible story of homelessness in America through the eyes of a group of young homeless and home-insecure ballet dancers in New York City and the mentor that inspires them.

When one’s sole focus is to provide for their children, the stakes are extremely high. The need for multiple jobs to make ends meet has become a common reality for many families in this country, which leads to a very important question: who looks after the children while their parents work? Through the Night examines the economic and emotional toll affecting some American families, told through the lens of a 24-hour daycare center in Westchester, New York. At the center of it all is Nunu, the primary caregiver and a hero to many families in need of a safe space to bring their children.

Filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown following the death of his infant niece and the subsequent arrest of his brother-in-law as the culprit. Using the audio-visual approaches of essay film, first-person cinema vérité, staged actions, and decades of home movies, Madsen navigates a town steeped in opioid addiction, economic depression, and religious fervor, while using the act of filmmaking to rebuild familial bonds and reimagine justice. Posing empathy as a tool for creating a more just world, North By Current does not seek to investigate a crime, but creates a relentless portrait of an enduring pastoral family, poised to reframe and reimagine narratives about incarceration, addiction, trans embodiment, and ruralness.

Iranian musician Shahin Najafi flees his homeland and heads to Cologne, Germany after harsh criticism by several clerics over the release of his song speaking out against human rights abuses resulted in a fatwa being issued.

An archival documentary about the U.S. military’s response to the political and racial injustices of the late 1960s: take a military base, build a mock inner-city set, cast soldiers to play rioters, burn the place down, and film it all.

American filmmaker Julia Loktev, born in the Soviet Union, returned to Moscow in 2021 to make a documentary on the persistence of independent media journalism in Putin’s Russia—just months, as it turned out, before the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Structured in five chapters, Loktev’s film is an extraordinary vérité document of a moment of immense change and anxiety.

Afghan documentary maker Najiba Noori offers not only a loving and intimate portrait of her mother Hawa, but also shows in detail how the arduous improvement of the position of women is undone by geopolitical violence. The film follows the fortunes of Noori’s family, who belong to the Hazaras, an ethnic group that has suffered greatly from discrimination and persecution.

A meditation on the elemental bonds of family told through portraits of four Syrian families in the aftermath of war.

Following the death of her brother, filmmaker Robie Flores returns to her hometown Eagle Pass on the Texas/Mexico border, wanting to turn back time. She collides with unruly experiences of adolescence – quinceañeras, Rio Grande river excursions, teen makeovers and beyond – that invite her to soak up the details of the home her brother adored and she ignored. What emerges is a playful dance between a personal and collective coming-of-age portrait of kids on the border and Robie herself as she rediscovers the possibilities of joy in the aftermath of grief.

The documentary team follows two happiness agents in their forties who spend a month and a half on the road twice a year, going door-to-door with their questionnaires in isolated villages in the Himalayas. The filmmakers undertake to provide an intimate insight into the daily lives and desires of Bhutanese people, and also seek the answer to the universal question of whether happiness can really be measured. Gross National Happiness promises a heart-warming journey into a mysterious, fairytale-like world, which is the exact opposite of the social order dominated by consumption and desires.

Two friends, both Indigenous fishermen, are driven to desperation by a dying sea. Their friendship begins to fracture as they take very different paths to provide for their struggling families.

The revelation of a top-secret British surveillance programme brings down the dominoes in a dark and analytical film about technology, rights and structural racism – and about a man with the courage to speak out.

LIFE AFTER is a gripping investigative documentary that exposes the tangled web of moral dilemmas and profit motives surrounding assisted dying. Disabled filmmaker Reid Davenport uncovers shocking abuses of power while amplifying the voices of the disability community fighting for justice and dignity in an unfolding matter of life and death. In 1983, a disabled Californian woman named Elizabeth Bouvia sought the “right to die,” igniting a national debate about autonomy and the value of disabled lives. After years of courtroom battles, Bouvia vanished from public view. Sundance-winner Davenport embarks on a personal investigation to find out what really happened to Bouvia and reveal why her story is disturbingly relevant today.

FOR OUR CHILDREN unites maternal voices of resilience and solidarity in a poignant cinematic journey. Directed, produced and co-written by Débora Souza Silva, this emotional documentary chronicles the powerful convergence of two mothers, Reverend Wanda Johnson and Angela Williams, whose lives were forever altered by the scourge of police brutality against their Black sons.

Director Penny Lane’s decision to become a “good Samaritan” by giving one of her kidneys to a stranger turns into a funny and moving personal quest to understand the nature of altruism. “Confessions of a Good Samaritan” is a provocative inquiry into the science, history, and ethics of organ transplantation, asking an ancient question in a whole new way: Who is your neighbor, and what do you owe them?

An intimate inquiry into the life and work of Fakir Musafar, an influential figure in the queer body-modification community. The film explores his outsized impact and the formation of the “Modern Primitive” movement through decades of archives and interviews with those close to him. Creative treatment of the archives presents them as living texts—photos and video are layered, inverted, and interpolated to bring them new meaning and texture. Angelo Madsen’s sophomore feature is supplemented by seamlessly interwoven personal accounts to craft an portrayal that is loving yet not afraid of critique, embracing both the joy of self-discovery as well as the complex spirituality Musafar came to represent. Through his life and work, the film gives rise to profound questions of bodily autonomy and the body’s relationship to our sense of self.

An aspiring hospital chaplain begins a yearlong residency in spiritual care, only to discover that to successfully tend to her patients, she must look deep within herself.

When the small town of Marion, Kansas, is thrust into the international spotlight after a police raid on the Marion County Record and the death of its 98-year-old co-owner, a fierce debate ignites about the abuse of power, journalistic ethics, local journalism, and the United States Constitution.